JTF (just the facts): Published in 2024 by Columbia Books on Architecture and the City (here). Hardcover (6.9 x 9.3 inches), 180 pages, with 58 black-and-white photographs. Includes texts and essays by by the artist, Richie Blink, Imani Jacqueline Brown, Jessica Dandridge, Rebecca Elliott, Michael Esealuka, T. Mayheart Dardar, Billy Fleming, Andy Horowitz, Arthur Johnson, Louis Michot, Nini Nguyen, Kate Orff, Jessi Parfait, Amy Stelly, Jonathan Tate, Aaron Turner, and John Verdin. Design by New Information. (Cover and spread shots below.)

Comments/Context: The work of Virginia Hanusik, an artist and writer born in New York and currently based in Louisiana, “explores the relationship between landscape, culture, and the built environment.” She also regularly speaks on the representation of landscape and the visual narrative of climate change. Hanusik grew up in the Hudson Valley; her parents worked in the building trades and she ended up studying architecture at Bard College, eventually enrolling into a photography class. In 2011, while still a student, she volunteered in Louisiana and returned to the state after graduation, taking a job with a non-profit focusing on coastal restoration and water management. 

In south Louisiana, water is ever-present, and so is the history of controlling it. The development of the Mississippi Valley accelerated in the early 1900s, with efforts to lock the river in place. The Flood Control Acts of 1928 and 1936 authorized the Army Corps of Engineers to construct thousands of miles of levees; these structures became monumental in shaping the Louisiana landscape and would have massive environmental impacts in the decades to come. As part of her project, Hanusik traveled to remote areas, discovering places outside the levees, as well as the small communities that lay beyond the federal control structures meant to protect people and property from storm surges and floods. Over time, the relationship between the people and the landscape helped her understand “why Louisiana is the way it is now.” Hanusik’s first photobook, titled Into the Quiet and the Light: Water, Life, and Land Loss in South Louisiana, documents a decade she spent in the coastal region of the state, bringing attention to the “land loss and the destruction of the historically rich and abundant landscapes of southeastern Louisiana.” The book has been shortlisted for the 2024 Paris Photo – Aperture Foundation Award. 

Released by an academic publisher (rather than by a more narrowly focused photobook maker), Into the Quiet and the Light has a rather conventional and unassuming design approach. A tipped-in black and white photo of a broken tree growing by the Mississippi River appears on its black cloth cover, and the title is placed at the very top in a white font. The book opens with Harold Fisk’s maps of the oxbows of the Mississippi River placed on the endpapers. The first section (with the table of contents and the artist’s introduction) and the last section are printed on brownish paper, with visual materials added using shorter pages. Further in, Hanusik’s photographs appear mixed with essays and poetry commissioned for the book. Overall, the book feels comfortable to hold and easy to navigate, encouraging the reader to engage with its rich content. The book’s accessible price point will hopefully make it available to a wider audience.

Into the Quiet and the Light opens with an essay by the artist, where she considers landscape painting and traditions in American art, in the context of the project. Hanusik sees the built form as a representation of collective memory, and a representation of our relationship with the land. She says that with this project she wants people to think of this “region – and coastal communities around the country – as an interconnected system rather than as separate and expendable landscapes.” 

Hanusik’s black-and-white photographs document buildings, power lines, abandoned structures, raised homes, and various traces of engineering projects put in place to contain the water. Well composed and intentional, her images feel calm and deceptively simple. One photograph shows a raised home in Delacroix, St. Bernard Parish; it stands well above the oversized car parked right underneath. Another spread pairs a photo with a sign reading in all caps “End of the World, Delacroix, LA” placed near an electrical pole at the water’s edge, with a similar image of a tree trunk and abandoned wooden structures in the water of Lake Maurepas. In a different image, Hanusik offers a close up of a roof after the winds of Hurricane Ida had stripped it clean. Her photographs don’t necessarily focus on devastation; they rather have a spiritual quality, and stand as symbols of larger, more complex issues around the changing climate.

The artist notes that it is important for her to contextualize various aspects of her work that might not necessarily be evident just through her photographs. The book includes contributions from sixteen authors, ranging from personal essays, song lyrics, and even a recipe, representing a range of work that people in the community are doing. The dialogue between the photographs and writings crafts a rich and layered picture of how political and economic forces shape the land and the communities that occupy it. 

Hanusik’s project brings to mind other personal accounts of the effects of climate change and environmental degradation, like The Eyes of Earth by Solmaz Daryani (reviewed here), which juxtaposes recent photographs with family archives to tell an intimately personal story of environmental degradation. And in Cry of an echo (reviewed here), Małgorzata Stankiewicz takes a stand against the logging of the Białowieża Forest, an ancient forest located on the border between Poland and Belarus. Although each of these artists has taken a different approach, these books remind us of the very severe consequences of irresponsible human activities, and Hanusik’s book is an excellent contribution to the ongoing conversation about climate change. 

In the end, Into the Quiet and the Light is a sensitive photobook that reminds us of the fragility of our environment, and ultimately, of the consequences of our own decisions. It definitely requires both deep reading and seeing. In south Louisiana, water has uniquely informed the ways people build and live, and Hanusik thoughtfully presents this reality in a photobook format. And while her project focuses on the communities in south Louisiana, it certainly also addresses more global issues. Hanusik notes that it is unclear what the next century (or even fifty years) will bring to the coastal communities around the world, but her project is dedicated to “complicating disaster-oriented narratives and the imagery that come with them.” 

Collector’s POV: Virginia Hanusik does not appear to have consistent gallery representation at this time. As a result, interested collectors should likely follow up directly with the artist via her website (linked in the sidebar).